That's considering every single fact for the setups I've posted, not just price and performance. I've noticed the 5870 Crossfire to stutter alot in Metro 2033 DX 11 so I'm straying away from ATI for now unless I were to for the 5970 or someone can prove me wrong lol.

I have no problem with the price, but not going to go overkill and buy two 5970's if you know what I mean.

Well in my opinion two GTX 480's are nice and you can always add more. Or two GTX 470's or two GTX 460's. They are all great, ATi 5850 crossfire, 5870 crossfire, one 5970. But in the long run the Nvidia cards will perform better as they have better scaling. Two GTX 480's munch a single 5970, imagine 3 or 4 GTX 480's! You'll be set for the next 2-3 years with 3 GTX 480's. Im pretty sure 3 GTX 480's out perform two 5970's. IF you want have a look at this review, Tri SLi performs extremely well. http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-480-3way-sli-review/6

Well in my opinion two GTX 480's are nice and you can always add more. Or two GTX 470's or two GTX 460's. They are all great, ATi 5850 crossfire, 5870 crossfire, one 5970. But in the long run the Nvidia cards will perform better as they have better scaling. Two GTX 480's munch a single 5970, imagine 3 or 4 GTX 480's! You'll be set for the next 2-3 years with 3 GTX 480's. Im pretty sure 3 GTX 480's out perform two 5970's.

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Yeah but when summer hits I'd be inviting people over for a sausage sizzle on my GTX 480 SLI setup.

The 470's seem like a great choice at the moment though and my board gives the potential to add a third......

Well, think about it....If they die from heat, they'll be covered with warranty, you have AC? I'm pretty sure you well if you have that much money to buy gpu's, add some spot fans, you case has very good airflow, they are made to handle the heat and who doesn't like sausage sizzles?

Well in my opinion two GTX 480's are nice and you can always add more. Or two GTX 470's or two GTX 460's. They are all great, ATi 5850 crossfire, 5870 crossfire, one 5970. But in the long run the Nvidia cards will perform better as they have better scaling. Two GTX 480's munch a single 5970, imagine 3 or 4 GTX 480's! You'll be set for the next 2-3 years with 3 GTX 480's. Im pretty sure 3 GTX 480's out perform two 5970's. IF you want have a look at this review, Tri SLi performs extremely well. http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-480-3way-sli-review/6

Well, think about it....If they die from heat, they'll be covered with warranty, you have AC? I'm pretty sure you well if you have that much money to buy gpu's, add some spot fans, you case has very good airflow, they are made to handle the heat and who doesn't like sausage sizzles?

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You make a good point lol, I may go gtx 480 2-way SLI and add a 3rd one in later

be aware a 5970 + 5870 can be safely run on a 850w psu but 2 overclocked 470s can hit 1000w peak draw 480s can touch 1100watts or more think of it this way 2 480s use 320w each at max load so 640w draw but its not 100 620 watts is closer to the actually gpu only load where as 3 5870s or a 5970 + 5870 will hit the same power draw roughly

cant find it right now but bodar did a review on crossfire from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 gpus using 5870s

from the looks 3 5870s use less power and are faster then 2 480s but ymmv

for the most part tho 2 gtx 460s or 2 5850s max everything

and as far as the Metro 2033 thing ALL gpus struggle with that game i dont care if its nvidia or ati turn on the DOF settings and the game chugs on stock 5850s i average 50 fps at 1920x1200 with DOF off but DX11 very high with tesselation on

altho if you have the PCIE slots i suggest 3 5850s due to there overclocking and the fact that the tesselator in the 5850s is the same as the 5870 means as DX11 grows the gap between both will diminish and an overclocked 5850 is 3% slower on average roughly 1 fps in crysis etc if you get reference models they max out same as the 5870 and some have had luck flashing the 5850 with 5870 bios giving higher voltages allowing easy reach of higher clocks among other things just food for thought

again no matter what setup you pick your gonna have insane performance

A 5970 is good, but 3 GTX 480's outperform 2 5970's if you wanna add another card down the line. You'd be better off with Nvidia. Reviews on Guru3d experienced bottleneck with 3 GTX 480's with an i7 930 At 4ghz, so there's still power left in 3 GTX 480's, it's basically unknown unless you have a 980x.